In To Be Continued, the first volume of Robert Silverberg’s Collected Stories, not every story was good, but each one was interesting – due to no small part to the introductory note by Silverberg himself prefixed to each story: Taken together, those notes provided a fascinating account of what it was like to be an American Science Fiction writer in the 1950s. The second volume, which is titled To the Dark Star and covers the period from 1962 to 1969, again has those introductions, but they are for the most part more limited in scope – they still are interesting to read, but as contributions to a biography of Silverberg rather than as giving an overview over the state of Science Fiction literature in the United States at the time (although that aspect has not completely vanished, it just has receded into the background). On the plus side, the stories they are introducing are significantly better at this stage in Silverberg’s writing career, and the reader starts to get an idea of why Silverberg is not only considered one of the most prolific but also one of the best SF authors.

The quality still varies a bit, as it will in almost any collection, but it does so at a consistenly high level. Many of the stories come across as somewhat gimmicky (a problem with a large amount of short form Science Fiction), because they are either too much streamlined towards their punchline or based on just a single idea and not moving beyond that. The best ones, though, have a richness of invention and a narrative momentum that makes them linger in the reader’s mind for a long while after having read them, as if they were not quite containable in the story form. In that light, it is probably not an accident that two of my favourite stories in this collection, “A Happy Day in 2382″ and “Hawksbill Station” later became part of or were expanded into a novel.

One reason why the introductions are not quite as informative about the period in general might be that the stories themselves are – there is a pronounced shift in both subject and form here, away from adventure tales on far-away planets towards an exploration of the conditio humana by means of speculative narratives whose formal and technical range widens as it subject matter deepens. Some stories that I particularly enjoyed and that showcase this development are “Passengers”, “Going Down Smooth” and “Sundance” all of which show Silverberg experimenting with form and language as he explores extreme and alien mindstates. You really can tell that the Sixties have arrived and that suddenly a lot of things became possible that weren’t before, and I think some of the enjoyment Silverberg seems to have had in trying out new themes and techniques and in pushing boundaries transmits itself to the reader.

But something else also becomes more noticeable in this volume than it was in the previous one, and that is Silverberg’s somewhat problematic attitude towards females. I would not go quite so far as to call him mysogynistic as I’ve seen some do, but it is hard to ignore the quite sharp contrast between the generally politically advanced and liberal tone of these stories and the way they portray women as weak, passive and mere victims. This seems a weird residue from the conservative Fifties that persists in the midst of a body of work that in all other respects breathes the spirit of the progressive Sixties.

How much one feels bothered by this will of course depends on one’s own sensibilities. I for one found it occasionally quite grating – not even that much in and of itself but because it clashes so dissonantly with the otherwise enlightened attitudes – but overall just a minor flaw in an oeuvre that despite this puzzling inconsistency remains among the most impressive in the genre.

After reading a collection of early Robert Silverberg stories last year, and more recently an anthology of 50's pulp magazine stories that he edited which included several of his own stories, I've been in a mood to read more. I became a fan of Silverberg's books when I read "Hawksbill Station", "Downward to the Earth" and "Dying Inside" as a teen, and then many subsequent ones. Silverberg is a prolific writer and has had a long career, so there is a lot of his material that I have missed. I've never really read his earlier material until recently, and this collection really highlights the period when he matured as a writer and came into his own in the mid 60's. These stories are clearly a step up from the material he had previously done, and were written during the period 1962-1969. With the exception of four or maybe five of the twenty-one included stories, I had never read these. Fred Pohl, as editor of Galaxy Magazine, coaxed Silverberg out of a retirement from science fiction writing and encouraged him to "up his game" and write better stuff than he had. And he did.

Silverberg writes an excellent introduction to each story in this collection, as well as one to the collection as a whole. I was delighted to find included in here the first novella version of "Hawksbill Station" from 1967, which was turned into a full length novel the following year. I had read the novel and liked it a lot - I always mentally credit Hawksbill as one of the books that transitioned me into more mature science fiction when I was young. I could only remember the bare outline of the story of Hawksbill Station, that it was a prison for political prisoners established far back in time in the Cambrian period. That was all I could recall. For food they fish for trilobites. Higher life does not exist. About 140 male political prisoners have been exiled back in time and there haven't been any new arrivals for 6 months when the story begins. Then a new man, much younger than all of them, arrives through the transfer machine. I really enjoyed (re)reading this novella. It was also a delight to find "Ishmael in Love", a story I had read decades ago.

Of the many included stories, most were good to excellent, but the title story "To The Dark Star" was probably my least favorite. "Bride 91" I didn't think was all that good either. Silverberg was trying to be funny, quirky and edgy in those interesting times of the late 60's - sometimes it worked and sometimes not so much. He relates a story about how Fred Pohl really disliked "Bride 91" and similar "edgy" stories. In retrospect "Bride 91" doesn't seem very edgy - more silly to me - but Pohl didn't like the stories Silverberg was beginning to write after a several year period of nurturing. Silverberg's commentary on the stories and the times adds a lot to this book. I enjoyed this collection and can recommend it for science fiction fans.

This book is Vol #2 of a growing number of Silverberg collections being published by Subterranean Press. A total of 9 volumes are planned. These are the included stories:

• To See the Invisible Man • (1963) • shortstory
• The Pain Peddlers • (1963) • shortstory
• Neighbor • (1964) • shortstory
• The Sixth Palace • (1965) • shortstory
• Flies • (1967) • shortstory
• Halfway House • (1966) • shortstory
• To the Dark Star • (1968) • shortstory
• Hawksbill Station • (1967) • novella
• Passengers • (1968) • shortstory
• Bride 91 • (1967) • shortstory
• Going Down Smooth • (1968) • shortstory
• The Fangs of the Trees • (1968) • novelette
• Ishmael in Love • (1970) • shortstory
• Ringing the Changes • (1970) • shortstory
• Sundance • (1969) • shortstory
• How It Was When the Past Went Away • (1969) • novella
• A Happy Day in 2381 • (1970) • shortstory
• (Now + n, Now - n) • (1972) • novelette
• After the Myths Went Home • (1969) • shortstory
• The Pleasure of Their Company • (1970) • novelette
• We Know Who We Are • (1970) • shortstory ( )

Just buy the book, buy this whole series whether you’re only curious after hearing Silverberg’s name or if you have some of his collections and novels or if you’re a hardcore Silverberg collector.

Yes, with the exception of “(Now + n, Now – n)”, all these stories seem readily available in cheaper versions – theme anthologies, award anthologies, best of the year anthologies, and, of course, many of Silverberg’s own collections.

So why should you pay for this expensive, limited edition collection (or even the cheaper Kindle edition)?

Well, if you’re new to Silverberg, it’s a way of sampling the variety of this amazingly prolific and protean author via some nice, handsome editions without the repetition you’d get by collecting Silverberg’s previous collections.

If you’ve already got some Silverberg collections in your library, it’s a way of seeing his development as a writer since the stories are arranged chronologically.

And everybody will benefit from Silverberg’s lengthy notes which help place each story in the literary and commercial contexts of science fiction at the time. And you can see not only Silverberg’s variety but his occasional returns to characteristic themes and tropes – history and time travel, specifically – or how he works variations on an idea in a few back to back stories.

This volume picks up after a four year gap between it and the first volume of the series. In 1958, the bankruptcy of a major magazine distributor resulted in the end of many science fiction magazine titles, and Silverberg’s markets dried up. Silverberg may not have been writing science fiction short stories, but he was making a comfortable living writing softcore sex novels, popular works on archaeology and history, articles for men’s adventure magazines, and a juvenile science fiction novel. Editor Frederik Pohl lured him back into writing short length science fiction with an agreement to buy everything Silverberg wrote – even if he didn’t publish it – if Silverberg would put aside glib and “quick-buck hackwork”. And so he did. The years covered in this volume saw the writing of some of Silverberg’s most famous and enduring works and his first nominations and award victories. These were the years just before Silverberg’s most prolific – and darker, more sardonic – era.

Those famous works are many:
• “To See the Invisible Man” where those deemed antisocial are sentenced to a legal invisibility.
• “Flies” whose hero is altered by aliens and sent home to wreck havoc on his ex-wives.
• “Hawksbill Station”, in the Late Cambrian Epoch, is where future political exiles are sent.
• “Passengers” is a chilling science fiction horror story of alien possession.
• “Ishmael in Love” one of those 1970s dolphin stories but a funny one.
• “Sundance” where aliens, genocide, and his past elaborately and puzzingly mix in the Amerindian protagonist’s head.
• “How It Was When the Past Went Away” is what happens when San Francisco’s water supply is tainted with LSD.
• “A Happy Day in 2381” is a jaunty look at an overpopulated future – except its hero thinks things are just fine. This was the first of six stories that became the novel The World Inside.
• “After the Myths Went Home” has the bored denizens of the future resurrecting legendary figures from myth and history. That spoilsport Cassandra has some things to say about the future.

The lesser known stories, still all worthwhile reading, are:
• “The Pain Peddlars” are future reality tv producers who literally record pain and transmit it to their bored audiences.
• The “Neighbors” are two men on a sparsely populated planet who wage war on each other with robotic armies.
• “The Sixth Palace”, seemingly inspired by all those popular archaeology books he was writing, is about an alien treasure horde guarded by a robot who, Sphinx-like, gives lethal quizzes.
• The “Halfway House” is a place where a human, in exchange for a cure of his cancer, toils away screening charity applicants for aliens. One of the lesser stories here given the ending seems a bit contrived.
• “To the Dark Star” is one of the first science fiction short stories to use a black hole.
• “Bride 91” is a future farce of galactic miscegenation.
• “Going Down Smooth” has a computer covering up, with its therapist, its anxieties and nightmares.
• “The Fangs of the Trees” is sort of an Old Yeller story mixed with the lesson that the universe sometimes doesn’t give good choices.
• “Ringing the Changes” features a malfunctioning body switching service which complicates the lives of its customers but also offers new and permanent options for change.
• “(Now + n, Now – n)” is Silverberg attempting humor of a sardonic sort but, mostly, it’s an interesting time travel story involving three versions of the narrator.
• “The Pleasure of Their Company” tries out the idea later used in Silverberg’s Time Gate series – simulating the personalities of historical and fictitious persons. Grafted to that idea is the story of a man fleeing in the wake of an unsuccessful political revolution.
• “We Know Who We Are” a lesser, far future story about the price of being adventurous. ( )